Richard Silverstein

Richard Silverstein is a MintPress analyst who has written the Tikun Olam blog since 2003, specializing in Israeli politics and US foreign affairs. Silverstein works to expose the excesses of the Israeli national security state. He breaks major news stories that are often under judicial gag or military censorship, and which may not be reported in Israel. He has been published in Haaretz, Al Jazeera English, the Forward, Christian Science Monitor, Middle East Eye, and the Seattle Times. He speaks Hebrew fluently and incorporates the Hebrew-language press into his blog and other publications. He earned a BA from Columbia University, a BHL from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and MA in Comparative Literature from UCLA. He did two years of undergraduate and graduate study at the Hebrew University. He lives in Seattle. Follow Richard on Twitter: @Richards1052

Kidnapped Abroad And Solitary Confinement: This Is What Due Process Looks Like For A Palestinian In Israel

Dirar Abu Sisi, a man without a country or a party, faces a cruel fate devised for him by Israeli intelligence, who claim the civil engineer masterminded Hamas’ missile engineering program.

Richard Silverstein
By Richard Silverstein
Palestinian engineer Dirar Abu Sisi, accused of masterminding Hamas' rocket program and training fighters in Gaza, attends a court session in the southern Israeli town of Beersheba, Thursday, June 16, 2011.

SEATTLE --- Last month, an Israeli judicial panel sentenced Dirar Abu Sisi, a 46-year-old civil engineer, to 21 years in prison for aiding Hamas’ rocket program. This plea deal capped a four-year ordeal that began with Abu Sisi’s unprecedented kidnapping on a train bound for Kiev in the dead of a Ukrainian winter in February 2011. The Mossad,

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In Israel, Jews Can’t Be Terrorists

One Knesset member has said African refugees are a “cancer” inside Israel, but the real cancer is Israeli hate, whether it be homophobia or Arabophobia. They are each part of the same malignancy that afflicts the body politic.

Richard Silverstein
By Richard Silverstein
Ultra Orthodox Jew Yishai Schlissel is detained by plain-clothes police officers after he stabbed people during a gay pride parade in Jerusalem on Thursday, July 30, 2015. Schlisse was recently released from prison after serving a term for stabbing several people at a gay pride parade in 2005, a police spokeswoman said.

SEATTLE --- An ultra-Orthodox Jew rampaged through the Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade on Thursday with a knife, wounding six participants, including one woman who was in critically injured. The suspect, Yishai Shlissel, was released from prison early last month after serving his sentence for wounding three people in an attack on the same parade in

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Poll: American Jews Support Iran Nuclear Deal

Among Jews under 40, the result was 59% in favor and 25% opposed, confirming a rising generation gap between younger and older Jews around questions concerning Israel.

Richard Silverstein
By Richard Silverstein

The L.A. Jewish Journal commissioned Jewish communal pollster Steven Cohen to poll American Jews on their attitude toward the Iran nuclear deal.  The results are startling because they expose a huge divide between the positions of the Israel Lobby and Jewish leadership and the rest of the community.  While the Lobby is preparing to spend

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The Israel Lobby’s $50M Campaign Against The Iran Nuclear Deal

If the Iran deal passes, Israel loses. The Israel lobby is spending big on whatever it takes to make sure this doesn’t happen.

Richard Silverstein
By Richard Silverstein

The next 60 days offer a fateful window through which Congress will review the Iran nuclear deal announced last week to great fanfare by the P5+1 powers and their Iranian counterparts. At the end of this period, both the House and Senate will vote on the agreement. Though the GOP has a majority in the latter body, it’s by no means a given that

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Breaking: Three Jewish Terrorist Suspects In Israeli Church-Burning Identified

Let us not hear from Israeli apologists that these youth are aberrations, that all of Israel denounces their acts.. they are doing what many mainstream Israelis would like to do but can’t.

Richard Silverstein
By Richard Silverstein
Yinon Reuveni, Hilltop Youth extremist, alleged Jewish terrorist

Israel, as usual in security cases and almost any sensitive matter, has slapped a gag order on the arrest of three Jewish terror suspects in the case of the arson attack on the historic Church of Loaves and Fishes in the Galilee.  The attack left a substantial portion of the edifice damaged along with degrading anti-Christian graffiti scrawled on

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Israel Removes Gag Order, Acknowledges Hamas Holds Israeli-Ethiopian Prisoner

‘The “liberal” Haaretz didn’t report a single word on my role. They did to me what Israel did to Mengistu. They erased me and my reporting entirely.’

Richard Silverstein
By Richard Silverstein
Avera Mengistu, right, at a celebration. Photo from Avera Mengistu's Facebook page.

Today, an Israeli judged removed the gag order prohibiting the domestic media from reporting that Avera Mengistu, an Israeli-Ethiopian citizen, crossed the border into Gaza last September and was imprisoned.  He has been detained there for the past eleven months.  During this time, no Israeli publication could report Mengistu’s name nor could they

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How The IDF Murder Captured Israeli Officers Under Hannibal Directive

The Hannibal Directive is a secretive military order that authorizes the Israeli military to murder captured Israeli soldiers. The former is praised as a hero, and the latter is given a state funeral. MintPress investigates: What is its true goal? And how often is it used?

Richard Silverstein
By Richard Silverstein
An Israeli soldier mourns over the grave of a soldier killed during Israeli last assault on the Gaza Strip, during his funeral at the military cemetery in Rehovot, Israel, Friday, July 25, 2014.

Wednesday marked the one-year anniversary of one of the most tragic events in the past three decades of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Operation Protective Edge. At least 2,100 Gazans, including 495 children, were killed by the Israeli Defense Forces. Of the total, 70% or more were civilians. In contrast, 73 Israelis were killed, almost all of

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